About Us

TANG Tao, Chair Professor, Computational Mathematics

Professor Tang Tao is a Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS), Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and Fellow of the China Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (CSIAM). Widely known for his expertise in computational mathematics, in particular high-order methods and adaptive grid methods, Professor Tang was awarded the Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis, the Feng Kang Prize for Scientific Computing, First Prize in Natural Science by Ministry of Education, and Second Prize in the National Natural Science Award. He gave an invited lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 2018.

Professor Tang has long been served in Canada and Hong Kong in a variety of key roles. From 2015 to 2019, he was appointed as the Vice-president and Provost at the Southern University of Science and Technology. From February 2019 to March 2024, he was the President of Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC). At present, he serves as Director of UIC's Institute for Advanced Study.

CHEN Zhi, Chair Professor, Sinology

Professor CHEN Zhi, Fellow of HKAH, is an internationally renowned scholar and researcher in Chinese Studies. His diversified interests in Chinese Studies include classical studies and early Chinese culture and history, historical writings, traditional Chinese poetry, excavated documents: bronze inscriptions and bamboo and silk writings, and intellectual history of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of several prestigious academic journals and book series, both Chinese and English, and was appointed as local convenor of Chinese Language and Literature in the Panel of Humanities of RAE 2009-14. Professor Chen published extensively in the US, Europe, the UK, Japan, and Greater China Regions in top-tier venues.

In addition to his remarkable scholarship, Professor Chen is an experienced university administrator. Apart from being the Head of the Department of Chinese at HKBU between 2010 and 2013, Professor Chen was Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts between 2015 and 2017. He was the founding Director of Mr. Simon Suen and Mrs. Mary Suen Sino-Human Institute between 2011 and 2014. Between 2012 and 2014, Professor Chen was appointed Founding Acting Director of Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology and became the Director from 2014 to present. From 2018, Professor Chen served as the Board Director of Wuhan College. Professor Chen joined Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College in 2018 as the Vice President (Academic) and was promoted to Provost in 2020. From 2022 to 2024, Professor Chen held the position of President at Hong Kong Chu Hai College. Presently, Professor Chen serves as President of Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College.

Patrick CHAU, Chair Professor, IT Adoption and Electronic Commerce

Professor Patrick Chau is Provost and Chair Professor in Information Systems and Business Analytics at UIC. Professor Chau received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He was elected President of the Association for Information Systems (AIS) in 2021-2022. AIS is the premier academic society in the Information Systems discipline with over 5000 members from close to 100 countries around the world. He was the first and only scholar from China elected to this presidency since the establishment of AIS in 1994. Professor Chau was appointed “Chang Jiang Scholars Programme” Chair Professorship by the Ministry of Education in 2010. He has also held Padma and Hari Harilela Professorship in Strategic Information Management at The University of Hong Kong, Qiushi Chair Professorship at Zhejiang University and Lee Dak Sum Chair Professor in Information Systems and Operations Management at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He received AIS Fellow Award in 2013, an honour from AIS extended only to a very small number of scholars in the discipline of Information Systems globally each year.

Professor Chau conducts research in IT adoption and electronic commerce and has more than 100 papers published in prestigious journals in the Information Systems discipline. He has been on Elsevier’s List of Top 2% Scientists worldwide since its first release. As of February 2024, his Google Scholar citations exceed 28,400 with an H-index of 62 and, in Scopus, more than 12,000 with an h-index of 44. He is Emeritus Editor-in-Chief of Information and Management, an A* journal in the Australia’s ABDC Journal List and a Level 3 journal in the UK’s ABS Journal List. Under his editorship, the 2-year impact factor of the Journal has grown from 1.84 in 2014 to 10.33 in 2021. He is also a Senior Editor of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, which is an A* journal in the Australian ABDC Journal List and a 4* journal in the UK’s ABS Journal List. He was Co-editor of Electronic Commerce Research & Applications and Global Editor of DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems.

Before joining UIC, Professor Chau was Vice-Provost for Research and Knowledge Exchange at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Prior to that position, he had served at The University of Hong Kong for almost twenty years, holding various management positions including Director of the School of Business and Associate Dean at the Faculty of Business and Economics.

ZHOU Yongming, Chair Professor, Cultural Anthropology

Zhou Yongming is a chair professor and Vice President (Academic) at UIC. He attended Nanjing University from 1980-1987 and taught briefly in the Chinese Department before studying abroad. He received his PhD in cultural anthropology from Duke University in 1997. He became an assistant professor in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999, obtained the tenure in 2005 and the full professorship in 2010. In 2001-2002, he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. Before joining UIC, he was a chair professor and directed the Center for Social Sciences and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). He also served as the Executive Director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at SUSTech. He was appointed as a “Qiushi” Chair Professor by Zhejiang University and a distinguished professor by Sun Yat-Sen University and Chongqing University.

Professor Zhou specializes in historical and cultural anthropology. He is the author of books Anti-Drug Crusades in Twentieth-Century China: Nationalism, History, and State-Building (Rowman & Littlefield, 1999) and Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China (Stanford University Press, 2006). He has also been a Mellon Fellow at the Needham Research Institute at Cambridge, a visiting fellow at the East Asian Institute (1999) and a senior fellow at the Asia Institute (2008) at the National University of Singapore. Professor Zhou served as the president of the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs in 2012. His latest “roadology” project focuses on the socio-cultural impacts of transnational road building on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau and in the Great Mekong Subregion. He is the editor of “Roadology”: Roads, Space and Culture and Chinese Anthropology, and is editor-in-chief of the Heritage Studies.

HUANG Huaxiong, Chair Professor, Applied Mathematics

Professor Huang Huaxiong received his BSc in mathematics from Fudan University and PhD from the Institute of Applied Mathematics at the University of British Columbia. He was a full professor at York University before joining UIC.

Professor Huang Huaxiong is one of the leading industrial applied mathematicians in Canada with an international reputation. His research covers a wide range of topics, including fluid mechanics and scientific computing, with applications in finance, biology, physiology and medicine. He has published over 100 papers and serves on the editorial board of several academic journals.

Professor Huang Huaxiong was a JSPS visiting fellow at the University of Tokyo, a three-time Erskine Visiting Fellow at the University of Canterbury, and a visiting professor at the University of Paris VI. He was a recipient of the Canadian Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society-Fields Institute Industrial Mathematics Prize, and a lifetime fellow of the Fields Institute for Research in the Mathematical Sciences, where he served as the Deputy Director between 2016-2019.

JIA Weijia, Chair Professor, Artificial Intelligence, 5G Internet of Things (IoT) and Edge Computing

Professor Jia Weijia obtained his Doctorate of Science from the Polytechnic Faculty of Mons, Belgium. He was a Professor at the Department of Computer Science in the City University of Hong Kong. Between 2014 and 2017, he served as the Zhiyuan Chair Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering in Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. From 2018 to June 2020, he served as Chair Professor of the University of Macau and the Deputy Director of State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City.

In acknowledgement of his scientific achievements, Professor Jia Weijia was elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and a distinguished member of the China Computer Federation (CCF).

Professor Jia Weijia has long been engaged in the research of computer science, enjoying a high reputation in areas such as AI Algorithm, Men-Machines-Things Knowledge Graph Completions, Smart City and 5G IoT, Next Generation Networking and Communications, and Edge Computing with 14 books and over 600 top-tier journal/conference papers to his credit. As a successful fund-applicant, Professor Jia Weijia has obtained substantial research funding as Principal Investigator (PI) and has received several prizes including the First Prize of Science and Technology from the Ministry of Education and the Best Product Award of Shenzhen Hi-tech Exhibition. He also took on a number of journal editorships, including IEEE Transactions on Parallel & Distributed Systems, Computer Communications etc.

Adrian J. BAILEY, Chair Professor, Geography

Professor Adrian Bailey received his PhD degree in 1989 from Indiana University, USA and then joined Dartmouth College, USA as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 1995. He moved to the University of Leeds UK in 1999 as Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Reader in 2004 and Professor of Migration Studies in 2007. In 2010 he joined Hong Kong Baptist University as Professor of Geography and Dean of Social Sciences, being promoted to Chair Professor in 2011. In 2020 he moved to Chinese mainland as Associate Vice President for Internationalization and Dean of the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at HKBU-BNU United International College.

Professor Bailey’s research is on transnationalism, migration, and lifecourse theory. He has conducted a wide range of quantitative, qualitative, and ethnographic research in diverse field settings that include the US, Mexico, El Salvador, the UK, the Netherlands, Czechia, Italy, Georgia, Moldova, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and China.

The Awards and Honours received include election as Fellow (Academician) of National Academy of Academics, Learned Societies, and Practitioners in the Social Sciences, UK (FAcSS) in 2013, election as Member of Gamma Theta Upsilon, the leading Geography Honors Society for undergraduate teaching in the USA in 2004, election as Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS, UK) in 2000, and the Lieber Memorial Teaching Associate Award, Indiana University, USA in 1989.

In addition to his scholarship, Professor Adrian Bailey has a wealth of experience in university administration at a senior level. He has served as Head of School or Dean since 1998 in the US, UK, Hong Kong SAR, and Chinese mainland, and as Acting Director of Center for Advancement of Social Science Research, Acting Director of the David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies (LEWI), and Acting Provost at HKBU.

Steve Wenbin LIU, Chair Professor, Management Science and Computational Mathematics

Professor Steve Liu earned his PhD degree from University of Leeds in UK. He began his academic career at Central South University, China, and taught successively at Imperial College, UK from 1991 to 1994, followed by the University of Kent, UK since 1995. With a wealth of experience in administration and management, he was appointed as the Chair Professor and the Head of Management Science Sector of Kent Business School, as well as the Director of Joint Research Centre for Anglo-Chinese Business and Management.

Besides his positions at UIC, Professor Liu also serves as a Professor of Beijing Normal University; the Overseas Professor in Evaluation Centre, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); the Overseas Assessor for management and mathematics, CAS; the Director of the UIC Centre for Evaluation Studies; the Executive Vice Director of UIC-WingChain Blockchain Research Centre; the Vice Chairman of the Chinese Evaluation Association, Chinese Society of Optimization, Overall Planning and Economic Mathematics; and the Deputy Director of CSIAM Activity Group on Financial Technology and Algorithm.

Professor Steve Liu’s main research areas are in Management and Computational Mathematics, specifically in productivity and performance analysis, scientometrics and research evaluation, numerical partial differential equations, and computational optimal control. Over 200 of his research papers have been published or accepted for publication, mostly in major international journals. He has also taken up the editorships of academic journals, including Information Process Management, and Journal of Research Management, etc.

PAN Jianxin, Chair Professor, Statistics and Data Science

Professor Pan Jianxin received his PhD from Hong Kong Baptist University in 1996, followed by his postdoctoral fellowship in Rothamsted Research of the UK (1996-1999), research associate in the University of St Andrews (1999-2000) and lecturership in Keele University (2000-2002). During his academic pursuit in the University of Manchester from 2002, he was promoted as Senior Lecturer in 2004, Reader in 2005 and Full Professor in 2006. Professor Pan had served as the Head of Probability and Statistics Group, on the Senior Leadership Team of the School and the Director of Internationalization of the Department of Mathematics at The University of Manchester, UK.

Professor Jianxin Pan is an internationally renowned researcher in statistical science and his research interests are within statistical modeling, statistical learning, and data science with application to medicine, public health, finance as well as industry. He has published over 130 research articles in journals of statistics and multidisciplinary research, and three research monographs with Springer and Science Press. He was awarded fundings from various research councils including those in the UK and Europe.

Professor Jianxin Pan is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute. He was the Chair of the Royal Statistical Society Manchester Group and has been serving as an Associate Editor for several prestigious academic journals, including Biometrics (2008-2018), Biostatistics and Epidemiology (2013-), Biometrical Journal (2016-), and Journal of Multivariate Analysis (2019-) and Electronic Journal of Statistics (2022-). He has successfully supervised over 20 PhD students and over 50 MSc/MPhil students.

FANG Kai-Tai, Chair Professor, Statistics and Data Science

Professor Fang Kai-Tai is a reputable statistician. He was elected as life Fellow by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) in 1992 and life Fellow by the American Statistical Association (ASA) in 2001 as well as Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI) in 1985. Professor Fang visited Yale University and Stanford University for two years and was invited as a Guest Professor in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and a Visiting Professor in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was a Vice Director of the Institute of Applied Mathematics, Academia Sinica (now known as Chinese Academy of Sciences), Beijing from 1984 to 1992. He had been Chair Professor of Department of Mathematics, Hong Kong Baptist University from 1993 to January 2006, Director of Statistics Research and Consultancy Centre from 1992 to 2005 and Head of the department from 2002 to 2005.  

His research interests are in statistics and mathematics, more specifically, in experimental design, multivariate analysis and data mining. He has been a productive author and has published 24 books (including 5 monographs in English), near 300 referred papers. He was the co-inventor of the uniform experimental design, which is used by engineers to expedite product development. He developed new methods for inference in generalised multivariate analysis.

Professor Fang has received a number of awards, including 2008 the State Natural Science Award at the Second Level with Wang Yuan, 2012 Guangdong Excellent Teacher by the Guangdong government, 2012 Zhuhai Advanced Teachers by the Zhuhai government, and 2014 ICSA Distinguished Achievement Award.

SUN Weiwei, Chair Professor, Computational Mathematics

Professor Sun Weiwei has been selected for the Guangdong Province Universities and Colleges Pearl River Scholar Funded Scheme. He received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Windsor in 1991. He held a professorship at the City University of Hong Kong before joining UIC. His research interests are in the area of computational mathematics, specifically in numerical partial differential equations, mathematical modelling and matrix computation. He has published over 130 research papers in referred journals and received more than 20 research grants as PI.

WANG Qing-Guo, Chair Professor, Control Theory and Control Engineering

Professor Wang Qing-Guo joined UIC in 2020. He was with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National University of Singapore from 1992 to 2015, where he became a Full Professor in 2004. He was a Distinguished Professor with the Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He holds A-rating from the National Research Foundation of South Africa. He is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. His research lies in the field of Automation/AI with focuses on modelling, estimation, prediction, control and optimization. His works cover the cores of Industry 4.0. He has published 7 research monographs and 350 technical papers in international journals. He received nearly 19000 citations with h-index of 75 and i10-Index of 229. He was presented with the award of the most cited article of the top control journal Automatica in 2006-2010 and was in the Thomson Reuters list of the highly-cited researchers 2013 in Engineering (1 out of 250 worldwide). He has supervised about 30 postdoctoral research fellows, about 40 PhD students and about 30 Master's students.

Jiang-Lun WU, Chair Professor, Financial Mathematics

Professor Jiang-Lun Wu obtained his Ph. D degree in Probability and Mathematical Statistics from the Institute of Applied Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing in 1991. He was a post-doctor at Wuhan University (1991-1993), Associate Professor at the Institute of Applied Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (1993-1999), Alexander von Humboldt research fellow and then DFG research fellow and assistant at Ruhr-University Bochum (1993-2000). From January 2001 to May 2023, he was an academic staff member at Swansea University: Lecturer (2001), Senior Lecturer (2005),  Reader (2007), and then promoted to personal chair (2011). He was appointed to be the chief representative for international affairs and development of the Faculty of Science, and Director of studies for BSc & MSc Financial Maths programmes. He joined UIC in June 2023.

He was an award holder of the Hundred Talent Programme of Shaanxi Province (as overseas distinguished professorship, 2013-2018)  and adjunct professor at several Chinese universities, including Northwestern Polytechnic University (2019-2022), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2014-2017) etc. He is a regular reviewer for EPSRC, the Royal Society, Hong Kong Research Grant Council, Italy CNIVR etc. He was a grant award holder of DFG, LMS Society, RPSRC and so on.

His main area of interest is probability theory and stochastic analysis, focusing on the analysis of stochastic partial differential equations arising from mathematical and statistical physics. He is also interested in modelling and simulations of stochastic processes linked with data analytics in fluid dynamics, quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, economics and finance, as well as in biology. He has published more than 120 SCI papers.

He has supervised more than 10 PhD students and over 40 MRes, MPhil and MSc students.

LIU Weimin, Chair Professor, Finance

Professor Liu Weimin joined UIC in 2023. He received his doctorate in finance from the University of Manchester. Following his PhD study, he became a Lecturer and a Senior Lecturer in Finance at the University of Manchester. Then, he was appointed Professor of Finance at the Nottingham University Business School. Professor Liu has experience in teaching a wide range of topics and courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His research interests include asset pricing, efficient market hypothesis tests, corporate finance, and mutual fund industry. Professor Liu has published in leading international finance journals such as Journal of Financial Economics (JFE), Review of Financial Studies (RFS), etc.

SHAN Xiaowen, Chair Professor, Computational Physics

Professor Shan Xiaowen is currently a Chair Professor at the Institute of Advanced Study of UIC. He received his BS and MS degrees from Beijing University in 1985 and 1988 respectively, and his Ph. D. from Dartmouth College in 1991. From 1991 to 2012, he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Microsoft, and Exa Corporation (now part of Dassault Systems SE), all in the United States. In 2012, he joined the Beijing Research Center of the Commercial Aircraft Company of China (COMAC) as the Director for Aerodynamics. In 2016, he joined SUSTech to found the Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering. Professor Shan is best known for the Shan-Chen non-ideal gas lattice Boltzmann model that he co-invented in 1993. The original paper published in Physical Review E was selected in 2018 as one of the 25 Milestones in celebrating the Journal’s 25th anniversary. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for “seminal contributions in the formulation and applications of lattice Boltzmann models for multiphase and complex fluids; and for pioneering Lattice-Boltzmann-method based fluid dynamics algorithms for real-world engineering applications.” Professor Shan published more than 70 research papers with more than 11,000 citations accumulated.

HUANG Yu, Chair Professor, Journalism, Media and Communication

Driven by an unwavering commitment to academic excellence, Professor Huang Yu brings his wealth of academic experience to the fore.

Professor Huang received a BA degree in Journalism and an MA in Communication Studies from Renmin University of China and his PhD from the University of Westminster, UK, in 1993. Professor Huang joined the Hong Kong Baptist University in 1994 as Lecturer and has since been promoted to Chair Professor. He has demonstrated exceptional leadership in education. He had taken up various management roles in HKBU, including Executive Associate Dean of Graduate School between 2011 and 2013, Dean of the School of Communication during 2013-2022, and Associate Vice-President from 2014 to 2022. Professor Huang was also appointed as the Senior Advisor to the President to provide professional advice on matters related to the development and strategic initiatives of HKBU. Professor Huang has made prolific contributions to scholarship in the fields of Journalism, Media and Communication. He has authored over 100 articles published in prestigious journals and more than 10 scholarly books in both English and Chinese in the field of his expertise. Professor Huang has further enriched the scholarly landscape through editorial roles. Recognising his exceptional contributions to the professional field, the Chinese Communication Association honoured him with the Lifetime Achievement Award in May 2023.

XU Baojun (Bruce), Chair Professor, Food Science and Technology

Professor Xu received his PhD from Chungnam National University, South Korea in 2005. He conducted postdoctoral research work at North Dakota State University (NDSU), Purdue University, and Gerald P. Murphy Cancer Foundation in the USA during 2005-2009. He did short-term visiting research at NDSU in 2012, and the University of Georgia in 2014, and followed by visiting research during his sabbatical leave (seven months) at Pennsylvania State University in the USA in 2016.

Professor Xu joined UIC in 2009 as Assistant Professor, he was promoted as Associate Professor and Professor in 2013 and 2015, respectively. He was promoted to Chair Professor in 2022. He was appointed as Programme Director of Food Science Programme in 2018, and Department Head of Life Sciences in 2022.

Professor Xu is serving as Associate Editor-in-Chief of Food Science and Human Wellness, Associate Editor of Food Research International, Associate Editor of Food Frontiers, and Guest Editor for special issues of Antioxidants, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Molecules, and the Editorial Board member of around ten international journals.  

Professor Xu is the author of over 310 peer-reviewed papers. He received over 17237 citations with an h-index of 64 and an i10-index of 202. He secured a few National and Provincial research grants. He was elected as Zhuhai Scholar Distinguished Professor in 2015. He received the inaugural President’s Award for Outstanding Research of UIC in 2016, the President’s Award for Outstanding Service of UIC in 2020, and was listed in the world's top 2% scientists by Stanford University in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and was listed in the Best Scientist in the world in the field of Biology and Biochemistry at Research.com in 2023. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in 2023.

Adolf K.Y. NG, Chair Professor, Transportation and Supply Chain Management

Professor Adolf K.Y. Ng received his PhD degree from the University of Oxford, excelling in the research and teaching of transport, global supply chains, and green logistics. Professor Ng’s scholarly outputs include eight books, more than 110 papers in leading journals, and other forms of publications. He receives numerous prestigious accolades, and frequently offers strategic advice to major organisations, such as the United Nations (UN), the European Commission (EC) and the African Development Bank (AFDB). He is currently an Associate Editor of Maritime Policy & Management.